The view of almost half of the U.S. has risen slightly from when
Gallup first asked the question 30 years ago, despite being
at odds with substantial scientific evidence
that humans evolved over millions
of years.

The poll — based
on telephone interviews of a random sample of 1,012 U.S. adults
and weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education,
region and adults in the household — has a "95% confidence that
the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points."

About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved "with
God's guidance" while 15 percent said humans evolved and God had
no part in the process, meaning that 78 percent of Americans
believe that God has at least some part in guiding the process.

Gallup has asked Americans to choose among these three
explanations for the origin and development of human beings 11
times since 1982.

Since the poll explicitly frames the three alternatives in terms
of God's involvement in the process of human development, highly
religious Americans were more likely to accept the creationist
viewpoint.

Two out of three Americans who attend religious services
weekly choose the creationist alternative, compared with 25
percent of those who seldom or never attend (with monthly
churchgoers falling in between).

Nevertheless, "those who seldom or never attend church are more
likely to believe that God guided the evolutionary process than
to believe that humans evolved with no input from God."

The study notes that highly religious Americans "are more likely
to be Republican than those who are less religious" as 58 percent
of Republicans believe that God created humans in their present
form within the last 10,000 years (compared to 39 percent of
independents and 41 percent of Democrats).

Gallup researchers concluded that "there is no
evidence in this trend of a substantial movement toward a secular
viewpoint on human origins."